Dear Former Homeowner:

[theweaselking]

While I appreciate that it's difficult to ensure that *all* of your addresses are changed, one would expect that you had perhaps changed *some* of them.

However, since the 6-month period during which Canada Post forwards your mail to your new address has now expired, I should not be receiving:
A) your bank statements
B) your RRSP statements
C) your cellphone bills
D) your letters from HRCC based on requests made in MARCH OF 2008.

While I am willing to call all of these people back, explain the situation, and then shred the documents that I have been erroneously sent since I do not have a forwarding address for you, I still don't like doing it.

When this kind of document arrived during those six months of mail forwarding, complete with giant yellow "FORWARDED DOCUMENT" sticker, of the sort *we* saw for the few things *we'd* forgotten to get changed, did it not occur to you to contact your bank/provider/POTENTIAL FUTURE EMPLOYER and inform them of the address change?

I hate you,
John

Comments

[ambug666.livejournal.com]

Can you not just write on the envelope, "no longer at this address, return to sender" and put it back in your mailbox for pickup?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No idea!

Seriously. That's never been something I've ever had to deal with before.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I even "return to sender; no such person at address" on junk mail from companies I don't want to hear from. Such as those annoying credit card things you always get. :)

By law they have to comply to your request.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

I wait till i have 2 credit card ones, then put the details from one in the return address for the other and send them back. Costs them money.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Oh, you mean opening them and using the reply envelopes? Up here the outsides of the envelopes don't usually have addresses.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

Ah ok - the ones I seem to get make it as easy as possible for you to return the application. So the bank sends you a postage-paid reply envelope with the application. Take A, put it in env-B, and vice versa. Hilarity ensues. Or something

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

Indeed, this trick will not only work, but it will put all the consequences of the neglect directly in Former Homeowner's lap.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

You can do it aux Etats, but I have no idea whether it works in Canada.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

That's what I've been doing. I'm getting less and less now.

[heraldofchaos.livejournal.com]

cross out the address on the envelope and put, "not at this address" under it then put them all back a mailbox.

had to do it alot when i was the super for my building.

[hennyanya.livejournal.com]

We've been in our house for 10+ years, and we still get delinquent tax statements for someone who might possibly have lived here, once upon a time.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

BTW... it's a Federal offense to open someone else's mail even if it was sent to you in error. If you get their permission, that's different.

Best just to "return to sender/no such person at address" and pop them back in a CP box.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's easy to tell who to call in case of a letter addressed to the former occupant from a bank.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

No, I know. Addressed mail or addressed admail is very obvious. But you did say you haven't had to deal with non-forwarded mail like this before, and I don't want you to get arrested. :)

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I have this problem with my phone. The guy changed it for some reason and even two years later I'm getting occasional calls from not unimportant people like his kid's doctor. It took him over a month just to correct his front door security system. It's a sodding mystery, because it doesn't seem like he was skipping out on something, just very very lazy.

[graethorne.livejournal.com]

We got our place in July of 2004. We're STILL getting shit addressed to the former owners.

Swine.

[jerril]

We moved, May 2004. We're getting mail from three owners ago. >.<

IT WILL NEVER END.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

We still occasionally get a phone call.

We moved here in 1990.

[graethorne.livejournal.com]

Certainly seems that way, don't it?

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

There are places I have tried to change my address or get to stop sending mail, but my mom gets the mail anyway. :(

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I've owned my license plates since 2002. I bought them, with my previous car. I transferred them to my new car when I bought it in 2006. They're in my name. All the information had my old address, and then, when I moved, I got it all switched to my new address. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, pulls up my new address whenever anything to do with my car gets checked, according to the MTO and to the cop friend I had check for me.

However, any time I take the 407? The bill gets mailed not to my current address, not to my former address, but to *the former owner of the car*. It's not the car she owned, and the plates have been mine for more than half a decade, but she still gets mailed my bills.

Nobody at MTO can figure it out, either. The problem is, the toll route system is entirely automated.

[gryphart.livejournal.com]

We get mail about the lawsuit regarding the last guy to live here... don't know where he moved, so we just trash it. (Since our mailbox has our NAMES on it, I'm assuming our post workers are pretty dense.)

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

No, they deliver to an address, not a recipient.

[gryphart.livejournal.com]

But - and here's the thing that bothers me - they wouldn't deliver mail to us until our names were on the mailbox (we're in an apartment building)... so it seems pretty stupid and pointless to insist on them if they're not going to pay attention.

[kjn]

See my comment below to Jamie: it seems your mailman follow the rule that name and delivery address have to match the mail. This is especially understandable given that you live in an apartment complex, instead of a single house.

I told every single person moving into the houses where I delivered mail that they needed to get their name on the door if they wanted to get their mail.

[kjn]

Not necessarily. Now, I only know the Swedish postal system, but we are to match up both the delivery address and the known names at that address with the mail. (Not all mailmen do, sadly including the one we have right now, but then they fail to comply with the rules.) In fact, in practice, an experienced mailman simply sorts the mail based primarily on recipient name.

Weasel should write "return to sender - no such recipient" on the mails and probably also make a call to the local post office and talk to the postmaster.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They're happy to use mail forwarding to take recipient+address and send it somewhere else while allowing otherrecipient+address to get through, though.

So I wonder what it would take to get "recipient+address" held or trashed.

[getoffthegrid.livejournal.com]

how about a comment from the other side.
I have had a post office box in my hommetown for over three years. I know most of the mail carriers, as I kind of grew up with all of them.
When I left and came back, I decided it would easier if I got a central box, because I had moved a bunch of times.
The apt. complex that I live in is apparently a national "chain" omplex and has decided to make ervything centralized to about 7 states away, I can no longer mosy over to the office and drop my rent off, etc.
I have a box downstairs in my bldg lobby that I NEVER use, and have let evryone know this through forwarding/change of address forms and even speaking to the postmaster in my town.
And today, I got off the phone for the 6th time with the central office that they have recieved back a letter/form/reciept/invoice with a return to sender no such address. AND IT'S ADDRESSED TO MY APARTMENT NUMBER... not my post office box.
So I explain to person #6 in this apparently large office, that I don't use my box downstairs that is attached to my apartment number. I have had said box in town for a while.
Person #6 tells me that because it's a lease,by a US law, they HAVE to address everything with my apartment number, and have NO way of sending it to where I usually get mail.
So I don't reieve my rent invoice at all, or have I recieved the signed copy of my lease. Hmmmmm.
And apparently, every month from now until I decide to move I will have to talk to everyone in another state about this, and they will have to "personally" address this piece of whatever and drop it in the mail "personally" so I actually get it.
The US postal system and laws sometimes makes you want to throw your hands in the air...
I give up.

[madfishmonger.livejournal.com]

I've been getting mail for a guy who moved away at least two years ago. I write "MOVED" and "NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS" and once even covered the entire envelope in "MOVED" is various sizes, but I still get his mail. I called Service Canada and they just told me to send it back. *sigh*

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

Dear John,

I eat poop.

Sincerely,

Former Home Owner

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

"Return to sender, adressee unknown", if you're feeling overly helpful. Otherwise just dump in the next mail-pickup-box, it'll get returned, too.

Yes, I've had that fun, too. At the current apartment with the added bonus of sometime-police-visits because one of the former tenants seems to have trouble with immigration laws. (About a year after I moved I discovered that there were about 5 or 6 people still registered at my apartment, took me a couple months to sort it out.)